Iran Arrests Iranian Employees of British Embassy as Protests Return

Protesters in Tehran showed a "V" for victory in support of Mir Hussein Moussavi on Sunday.Credit
Your View, via Reuters

CAIRO — Iran’s government said Sunday that it had arrested Iranian employees of the British Embassy, while the police in Tehran beat and fired tear gas at several thousand protesters who joined a demonstration at a mosque in support of the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi.

The government’s arrest of nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy was a significant escalation in its conflict with Britain, which Tehran has sought to cast as an instigator of the unrest since the disputed June 12 election. It said the embassy employees played a significant role in organizing the protests, which have reached across the country and across social and economic lines.

Tehran also continued to charge journalists with working as agents of discord, publishing one editor’s “confession” while continuing to keep others behind bars without charge, or barred from working.

The arrests, detentions and restrictions added to Iran’s growing international isolation, as European Union foreign ministers meeting in Corfu, Greece, warned in a statement that there would be a “strong and collective E.U. response” to any intimidation of its members’ diplomatic staffs. The British Foreign Ministry said some of its personnel had been released, but declined to provide details.

In the past, international pressure was enough to rally the nation behind its leaders and silence critics. But this time, that did not seem to be the case. Instead, the government’s actions, coupled with renewed calls for national unity, added to a growing sense of uncertainty over where Iran was headed as its leaders tried to pull out of a crisis that has undermined its legitimacy and divided the political and clerical elite.

In spite of all the threats, the overwhelming show of force and the nighttime raids on private homes, protesters still flowed into the streets by the thousands on Sunday to demonstrate in support of Mr. Moussavi.

Mr. Moussavi, who has had little room to act but has refused to fold under government pressure, had earlier received a permit to hold a ceremony at the Ghoba mosque to honor Mohammad Beheshti, one of the founders of the 1979 revolution who died in a bombing on June 28, 1981, that killed dozens of officials.

Mr. Moussavi used the anniversary as a pretense to call a demonstration, and by midday the streets outside the elaborately tiled mosque were filled with protesters, their arms jabbing the air, their fingers making a “V” symbol, for victory.

The demonstrators wore black, to mourn the 17 protesters killed by government-aligned forces, and chanted “Allahu akbar” or “God is great.”

“There was a sea of people and the crowd stretched a long way onto the main street on Shariati,” said one witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.

What started as a peaceful demonstration turned into a scene of violence and chaos by late Sunday, witnesses said.

Photo

A protest in Tehran swelled on the anniversary of the death of a founder of the 1979 revolution.Credit
Sahar Jalili/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Some described scenes of brutality, telling The Associated Press that some protesters suffered broken bones and alleging that the police beat an elderly woman. The reports could not be independently verified because of tight restrictions imposed on journalists in Iran.

The leadership seems to recognize that ending the street demonstrations is far easier than turning the clock back to the days before the election, when there was still some degree of trust in a system that sought to marry religious authority with popularly elected institutions, political analysts said.

“I think no one can predict Iran’s political future,” said an Iranian intellectual who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “I do believe some things have changed after this recent upheaval and that events will play out in months and years to come.”

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The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ruled out any compromise with the opposition, said Sunday that the only solution to the crisis was to follow legal procedures. And he urged political leaders not to be what he called tools of foreign influence, returning to a theme of foreign intervention that historically has resonated across Iran but that so far has failed to silence the opposition.

“If the nation and political elite are united in heart and mind, the incitement of international traitors and oppressive politicians will be ineffective,” he said.

In spite of the unrelenting pressure of the state, including threats that protesters should be jailed and even killed, there were still high-ranking insiders who refused to endorse the government’s narrative. They were not agitating for the opposition — or even for defiance — but by carefully not endorsing the leadership, were seen as challenging it, political analysts said.

“As one colleague said, the train has left the station, and I don’t think even the leaders of the country know exactly where it is heading,” said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

The former two-time president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a bitter opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made his first public remarks on Sunday, also under cover of a ceremony honoring those killed in the 1981 bombing. His comments suggested support for the public’s actions.

“The recent events were a complex plot by suspicious elements that wanted to create a gap between people and the establishment and was aimed at people to lose their confidence in the establishment,” he said, according to the ILNA news agency.

He added: “Whenever people have entered the scene such plots have been neutralized.”

The leadership has maintained its two-track approach to the protests that began shortly after the polls closed on June 12. It has ordered its security forces, including the police and the Basij militia, to frighten, beat and detain opposition figures — as well as independent-minded citizens and journalists not involved in the protests or political activities. It also has tried to offer an alternate route for resolving the dispute by asking the Guardian Council, responsible for monitoring the elections, to set up a review committee to include representatives of the opposition candidates.

But the opposition, led by Mr. Moussavi, has rejected the call, noting that the Guardian Council has earlier indicated its support for Mr. Ahmadinejad — and has twice said that there were no signs of rampant fraud and that it would not nullify the outcome. The council is scheduled to certify the election as valid any day.

Instead, Mr. Moussavi sent a letter to the Guardian Council calling for the creation of an arbitration committee to investigate what he says are widespread irregularities. He repeated his belief that nullifying the disputed vote would be the most “appropriate” solution and “a means to rebuild public confidence.”

This article was written by Michael Slackman in Cairo based on reports from Tehran.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Iranians Working at British Embassy Are Arrested as Protests Return. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe